


Those Who Sleep Unwisely

by keybird



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Multi, Sort Of, Time Travel Fix-It, Vampire Culture and Customs, brutal abuse of the M dash, buckle up this'll be a long one folks, fic warnings mostly for canon events mentioned as backstory, more detailed content warning will be included in chapter descriptions, shameless references to Bram Stoker's Dracula, unnecessary worldbuilding becauae that's my brand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:08:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29775267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keybird/pseuds/keybird
Summary: Dracula's plans weren't as simple as they seemed, and his machinations live on despite his death. Distraught in the aftermath of Taka and Sumi's betrayal, Alucard unwittingly activates a spell written into the very walls of the castle; an ingenious, desperate enchantment meant to rewind history to before Lisa's death.Suddenly, all three of Dracula's killers find themselves in the days before disaster, struggling to reconcile the horrors of a past-that-never-was with a new, rose-tinted reality. Is there any room for forgiveness, in a world without the transgressions that need forgiving?
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65





	1. All Ye Who Enter

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I wrote anything with an actual plot, but I couldn't resist the siren call of a nice, long Trephacard fic. I don't have an update schedule planned out yet, but I'm excited about this project, so hopefully my updates will be pretty regular. I'm open to constructive criticism, but please be gentle! My writing muscles are still rusty.
> 
> CW for this chapter: suicidal ideation, dissociation, allusions to assault, mild amounts of gore.
> 
> (If I ever miss a trigger, or if you want me to add one, please feel free to tell me! I don't usually respond to comments, but I do read them and smile like a fool whenever I get one, so)

He hadn't lied to them.

He _hadn't_ lied to them.

There was blood, blood on his hands, blood and other things sticky on his face, his stomach, his thighs— oh God, he was covered in _them,_ and they were dead, and the copper stench of blood was perfume-heady and gag inducing all at once, like the scent of the roses rotting in the castle garden.

His mother had loved those flowers. His father had loved them too, but in the lonely days after, when the castle stood empty and broken, Adrian picked through the rubble and found the garden torn apart. Rosebushes were uprooted and massacred, plant matter scattered over deep gouges rent in the earth. Adrian recognized the particular stroke of his father's claws, and his chest ached. This was the kind of violence only ever born of despair. It was his father's madness, writ small; a vengeful mourning that she never would have wanted, but perhaps the only grief a vampire could feel. All consuming. Self Destructive. _Bloody._

Adrian was not a vampire.

He was not human, either.

He stumbled to his childhood bedroom with foal-clumsy legs, blurry-eyed and trembling. His skin felt too small, too hot; he felt as though he was outside himself, his body a marionette pulled to the whims of some unknowable ghost. Somewhere, his eyes were staring at the glint of a ring in a smoldered carpet. Somewhere, his hands were clenching until they were numb, bleeding where clawed nails dug into soft palms.

He hadn't lied to them. He had given them all he could. Knowledge, comfort, companionship. All things he desperately wanted for himself. And what had it gotten him? What had it gotten his mother, who saved lives and soothed hurts just to die, agonized, before a jeering crowd?

Adrian felt neither the burning, righteous rage of his father nor the calm, gentle acceptance of his mother. He wanted neither to express his pain nor overcome it. He wanted to wallow, wanted to stake the bodies of the ones who had hurt him before the castle steps like the macabre warnings of Dracula's past. He wanted to make this castle his grave, and abandon the foolish hope that the Belmont and the Speaker had stirred in him.

An icy well, Sypha had said. It had stung, at the time, but now… it sounded nice. To be something useless and forbidding, and therefore peaceful and undisturbed. Adrian was tired of being useful. If he could just sleep, just sleep and never be woken—

But _they_ had disturbed him, hadn't they? They all blurred together in his mind. Sypha and Trevor, pulling him from his sleep beneath Gresit. Sumi and Taka, walking up to his bed, touching him, offering a _reward…_

He didn't want to die. But sometimes he wondered if it would have been easier, if… if they had been right, to offer him what they did. A gentle touch, and a quick death. A little affection before sleeping for good. Hell, he was even in his bed. Adrian tried for a dry laugh. It came more as a sob.

Before he knew it he was shaking, choking on his own hitching breath, on his own lukewarm tears. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die, but he didn't want to live, alone and hurting and slowly going mad. Maybe his father had been right, that humans were petty and cruel. Maybe Taka and Sumi had been right, that the best he could hope for was to die with a little bit of pleasure still lingering. Maybe they all were right, and he'd killed them all for nothing. Only Trevor and Sypha had escaped him unscathed, and where were they now?

Where were they now?

Adrian was gripped by a sudden, desperate urgency. Whether it was to assure himself of their safety, or merely to comfort himself with the familiar sight of them, he did not know. Either way, he did not think he could bear to speak to them. But he remembered a mirror, giant and glimmering, kept in one of the castle's grand rooms. His father had taught him to use it, but he rarely had, content in the small world of life in the castle. It was a thing used mostly for lessons, his father calling up far away places, and pointing out the peculiarities of the landscape behind the glass. He sought it out himself, sometimes, to revisit the lovely vistas, and to sate his curiosity for things only found on the other side of the world, beyond the reach of mortal travel.

Adrian still remembered the room, and he found it with all the speed of a vampire. He ran unfeeling through the halls, eyes avoiding the sight of broken furniture and crumbling walls that marked the path of his desperate fight against the very man who had once sat with him for hours, pointing out zebras and kangaroos and capybara with the use of an immensely powerful artifact. He paused in the doorway of the mirror room, and swallowed hard.

Crystal shards spread across the ground like the detritus of a broken chandelier, but this was one scene of destruction that the battle had not caused. It was like the strife that had torn away the rest of his family had never touched this place. As always, the glass floated and reformed into a single pane at his command. Normal reflection faded and warped, and then he saw them.

Adrian froze, wide-eyed. There was Trevor and Sypha, but in the midst of a battle; her ice and his whip slashing through an army of the night. There was something strange beyond them, like another mirror, another window to some other place. It felt wrong, off. And the castle felt wrong, too, as if in response. The floor beneath Adrian shuddered. The glass of the transmission mirror fractured and resealed, wavering like a mirage in air suffused with magical power. Complex runes burned sun-bright on the walls and floors, like invisible ink revealed with the lick of a flame. In that other mirror, that other portal, Adrian's eyes met a gaze he thought he'd never see again.

His father. _Dracula,_ cape wrapped around his mother like the wings of a bat.

The magic reached a fever pitch. The world went white, then black.

. . .

Trevor had just finished whipping the guts out of some grotesque bird demon when he found himself suddenly empty handed, slumped over the lacquered wood of a bar. The hunter jumped to his feet, hand going instantly to his belt— thank fuck, at least, that he still had the Vampire Killer. Not thank God, though. He had a sneaking suspicion that God had shat in his breakfast again, a suspicion that only strengthened with the conspicuous lack of Morning Star in his hand, or Sypha at his back.

Shit, where was the Speaker, anyway? He spun around to look for her, but only found a crowd of unsettled tavern-goers looking at him like he was a rabid dog. Well, fair enough. He didn't know what the fuck he was doing any more than they did. Mostly he was just really, really hoping he hadn't gotten pulled into that hell portal somehow, because wouldn't that just be some typical Belmont luck?

At that thought, Trevor stopped wishing so fervently that Sypha was here too. He consoled himself with the thought that she'd probably give him a really nice funeral. Roses and everything. It was better than he ever thought he'd get, and, well, he knew his dirty soul was slated for hell eventually. Might as well make the most of it. Could people die in hell? Maybe he could kill Dracula twice.

If he _was_ actually in hell, which seemed less likely by the second. For one thing, there was way too much ale in this place for it to be any form of eternal damnation. For another… this tavern looked damn familiar.

Trevor strode out of the doors and winced in the glare of noontime sunlight. It was just as he'd thought— this was the same podunk town he'd been in a little over a year ago. Some tiny, unimportant hamlet, unremarkable and destined to go unremembered… except that it was the same town where, after a who-knows-how-long bender he spent drunk in a ditch, he'd staggered out of the town to inane rumors about Satan's wife being burned at the stake in Targoviste. The same town that was definitely close enough to the carnage that there was no way it was still standing, much less so… cheery.

Trevor's blood ran cold. Where— _when,_ had his fool ass ended up this time?

. . .

Sypha woke with her arms held out in a casting form, fingers poused to send a gout of flame into the face of the nasty beasty that had been lunging towards her only moments before. Or, she thought it had. Now, she found herself tucked beneath woolen blankets on a cozy straw pallet, rocking with the motion of a wagon. Her eyes were still bleary and sticky with sleep, but her body was tense, wracked with adrenaline. She didn't remember going to bed, and—

There, beside her, was another member of her caravan, humming to himself as he darned the tears in a pile of worn clothes. Sunlight glinted of the needle as he wove it expertly through the fabric, and the low drone of insects harmonized with the regular creak of the wagon wheels. Sypha froze, put off balance by the achingly domestic scene. She hadn't traveled with other Speakers in months. She hadn't traveled _without_ Trevor for months, either, but thus was more than just being separated from the hunter. She had been fighting tooth and nail, and now where was she? And how?

Sypha threw open the canvas flaps at the head of the wagon, startling the driver, who lost their grip on the reins for a moment before turning to her with an irritated frown. It was her cousin Matei. Matei, who she knew was dead.

They had died soon after the horde came, torn apart trying to protect a family with nothing but their fists. They had separated from the group to treat a child's scraped knee. The rest of the tribe had been bartering with tradesmen in the square. At the sound of screams, the whole town rushed to the scene, and then they saw it. A lone demon, some mangled, piggish thing, gloating over two torn carcasses barely recognizable as human. It had been that quick; both Matei and the child were dead.

Back then, with a single demon facing an enraged crowd, the threat had been vanquishable, the demon speared on one of many pitchforks to the sound of hollow cheers.

But more demons came, and kept coming.

"Sypha? Sypha? C'mon, you're really freaking me out here. Why'd you throw open the flaps like that, huh? Nightmare again?"

Sypha sucked in a breath. "Matei— you— where are we?"

Matei squinted at her. "Uh, pretty close to Târgoviște. Same as an hour ago, when you said you were resting. Are you feeling alright?"

" _Târgoviște?_ Smoking ruin, decimated by Dracula, Târgoviște? And Matei, I thought— you were dead! I saw your body!"

Matei chuckled in the awkward way they used to when they were uncomfortable. "Uh, I don't know what weird dreams you've been having, Syph, but maybe lay off the spices a bit tonight. Clearly you ate something that didn't agree with you. I'm pretty sure I'm alive, and last I checked, Târgoviște's still standing.

Sypha mumbled an apology, staring at the very real way that the sharp wind tousled Matei's hair and bit their skin pink with cold. Sure enough, the city of Târgoviște rose on the horizon, whole and unblemished.

Despite the idyll of it all, Sypha felt sick. Something was very, very wrong. And she was going to figure it out.


	2. Light Of All Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sypha follows rumors of a witch burning. Meanwhile, Trevor is Way Too Sober For This Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Implied canonical gore and death , but nothing takes place "on screen" in this chapter. Vague mentions of medicine / Lisa's practice as town doctor. Swearing, but like... I think that's more of a blanket warning for any fic with Trevor in it.
> 
> This took longer than I had hoped, since I was having trouble deciding the best way to structure the chapter. I'm still experimenting with chapter length and shifts in character perspective, so any feedback on how long you like chapters to be and how much perspective-hopping feels natural is welcomed. Right now, I anticipate writing 2k-3k words a chapter, and using multiple perspectives per chapter to keep the plot moving until everyone's reunited. As for how long the story will be overall? I don't have a concrete estimate yet, but I'm going to go with "pretty long."

Sypha parted from the other Speakers at the gates of Târgoviște, giving some excuse to her grandfather about visiting an acquaintance she'd made the last time their route had taken them to the city. He told her to come back by dark, and she promised she would, but already her mind was elsewhere.

The market streets were as bustling and cheerful as they had been years ago. Parents called out to children to be careful of the ice lining the cobbles, but none mentioned the threat of roving demons, or the curse that Dracula had laid upon the land. There was a lightness to the air that Sypha had forgotten, and even the distrust she received as a Speaker was more mild, none of the frothing hate that followed the hordes or the cautious respect that came after the rumors of Dracula's defeat. Still, she was well practiced in gauging the attitude of a place by its gossip, and so she strayed near merchants and drunks and washerwomen, trying to peice together the news of the day.

What she heard chilled the blood in her veins.

_The bishop… angry… doctor woman from Lupu… devil wife… say she's a witch… trust their judgment… son's old enough to see a burning… tonight._

Sypha remembered the charred remains of so many cities and villages, the seemingly endless blood. The army of malicious creatures that lingered even after Dracula was gone. The destruction. The despair. The look in Alucard's eyes, whenever he talked about his mother. She had to find Lisa. She _would_ find Lisa. And then she'd find out how she'd even ended up in this situation.

Priorities. It was time to save a life.

Sypha sent a silent apology to her grandfather— no way would she be back by nightfall— and followed the signs to Lupu. She knew from the whispers in the city that the clergymen had yet to leave, and it was early still. At worst, she would meet them along the road, and kick their teeth in. No one was burning today unless _she_ was the one to set the fire.

Lupu wasn't far, though it was hard to tell one sparse patch of buildings from another, here on the outskirts of the capital. It seemed like a peaceful place, with sturdy cottages festooned in ivy and surrounded by wide-boughed trees and grasses with a blueish tint that hinted at abundant watering. But it was quiet, and to Sypha, it felt sinister, knowing what was soon to come. There was a chill in the air, but she would have shivered even without it.

Sypha remembered night's around a fire in the wilderness, Alucard reminiscing over the days before his father's madness. Sypha could never quite bring herself to feel sympathy for Dracula, but she had been moved by Alucard's stories of Lisa. A woman branded as a heretic and a witch, and burned for it. Sypha was more a witch than she ever was, and the so the story had always cut too close to the quick of her own fears.

Even if Sypha was wrong, and this was some other doctor from Lupu, the woman didn't deserve to burn. Once, Sypha might have said that burning was the cruelest way to die. She'd seen worse, now, at the hands of the night hordes. That didn't make burning any kinder.

An old woman was ambling between the houses, making her way to a well near the center of town. Sypha followed, offering to carry one of her buckets. Wheezing, the woman agreed. "Haven't seen you before, dearie. You're a Speaker?"

"That's right, ma'am. I'm here looking for a doctor for my grandfather. I heard you had a good one, here in Lupu."

"Oh! Well, you heard right. She hasn't been here all that long, but she seems like good folk. Set my Eduard's ankle right when he twisted it. Soon as we're done here, I'll show you to her. I've been meaning to ask after my cough, you know." Drawing water was quicker work between the two of them, but Sypha was still on edge. Every moment felt like a moment wasted. Finally, they were done, and the woman walked with her to a stone house set slightly apart from the others. The old woman rapped on the door. "Doctor Ţepeş, are you in?"

Sypha grit her teeth and stared at the woodgrain of the door. She didn't know what she'd do, if no one answered. At least she knew this was Lisa, though. The name Ţepeş wasn't especially common, and the likelihood of another doctor having the same name in the same place was vanishing small.

She needn't have worried. Moments later, there was the clap of shoes on wood, and then the door was wrenched open to reveal a slight woman with a braid of pale blonde hair. The resemblance to Alucard was striking; there could be no doubt that this was Lisa Ţepeş, alive and standing before her like the last year and a half had never been.

"Oh, Mrs. Djuvara! Come in, come in, what do you need? And you too, uh…" The doctor looked over at Sypha with furrowed eyebrows, and the Speaker realized she'd been staring. She mustered up a weak, apologetic smile. 

"Sorry, I… I'm Sypha. You're Lisa Ţepeş, right? I really need to talk to you."

Lisa still looked confused, but nodded briskly, waving her in and closing the door behind her. In no time, Sypha found herself sat at a wooden table with a steaming drink in her hands, watching as Lisa talked to Mrs. Djuvara and prescribed her a bottle of medicine to clear her lungs. Sypha spent the time biting her tongue and casting nervous glances at the door. She'd never asked Alucard how the bishop had arrested his mother, wasn't even sure he knew. Sypha was confident in her abilities, but she had no clue what to expect, and there was the weight of Wallachia resting squarely on her shoulders.

The light had begun to wane by the time Lisa shooed the older woman out of her shop, rain beginning to patter on the roof. Mrs. Ţepeş turned to Sypha with a blinding smile, and sat across from her with a sort of easy grace that Sypha had only ever associated with her son. "So, you said you needed to talk to me? I'm sorry for making you wait, but Mrs. Djuvara's been having trouble breathing for a while now. I was getting worried."

Sypha smiled back, shaking her head. But her attempt at a reassuring expression quickly fell into a frown. "It's fine, Mrs. Ţepeş, but it's best if we don't waste any more time. I've heard rumors in Târgoviște. The Bishop… he plans to burn you for witchcraft. Tonight. I suggest you leave as soon as possible. And, don't… don't ask how I know this, but you need to find your husband. Return to the castle, at least for a little while—"

Lisa softly covered Sypha's clenched hands with her own. "It's all right. I know about Speakers and their prophecies. That's it, isn't it? A prophecy?"

Sypha sighed. "S-sort of. I can explain later. Just, uh, you need a hand packing? I'd feel a lot better if I knew you were safe. At least until you're out of the church's reach. Trust me, things end badly if you don't get out of here unscathed.

Lisa nodded once, sharp and decisive. "Alright. I'll miss this old place, but it's been to long since I've seen the rest of my family, anyway. Can you keep watch for the Bishop? I'll handle the packing. It's not as though I can take more than I can carry, anyway."

Sypha stared, a little bit in awe. "Yeah, I'll uh… be just outside." No wonder this was the woman who'd married Dracula. She'd just been told that the Bishop was coming to burn her at the stake and she'd immediately started thinking about which medical books to bring for her daring escape.

The Speaker ducked outside, standing beneath the eaves to avoid being pelted by the rain. She heard Lisa run up the stairs, and a few minutes later, back down. Lisa had just opened the door when they both spotted the red and black robes in the distance.

"Well," said Dracula's wife. "Looks like that's our cue to go."

. . .

Trevor had asked at least ten peasants which road led to Târgoviște before he got an answer that wasn't a suspicious glare. To be fair, he'd also asked quite a few of them what _year_ it was, and for once, he didn't stink enough of ale for it to be dismissed as drunken foolishness. Even as he stalked off down the road the helpful cobbler had pointed towards, the eyes of the locals burned the back of his neck like a brand. Truth was, Trevor had gotten comfortable. Traveling with Sypha and Alucard, he'd lost the finely honed edge of his paranoia and begun to let down his guard. He'd smiled more, lashed out less, begun to lose the nervous tic of clasping the edge of his cloak to hide the crest he still wore despite the trouble it gave him. He'd begun to feel safe, not that he'd ever, ever admit it. They'd never let him live it down.

 _And,_ a small part of him whispered, _you'll still fuck it up eventually. Show them where you're wounded and they'll just know better where to twist the knife when the time comes._

…Fuck, Trevor could use a drink. But if he was right about whatever magical bullshit he'd stumbled ass-backward into this time, then he didn't have time to drown his mutinous brain in booze. He had to save Wallachia, _again,_ because he was a damn hero, and it was always him who ended up in these cataclysmic piles of shit. It was probably a curse. Whenever he found Sypha again—and he _would,_ no matter how long it took— he was going to make her check him for, like, the magical equivalent of lice. Because he was pretty sure that whatever that was, he had it.

On top of the actual lice, which totally weren't his fault, no matter how much Sypha slandered his bathing habits.

Trevor fell into the same pattern he always did on the road, somewhere between alert and absent. The time passed faster when he didn't think about it, but today, he couldn't _help_ but think. Stubborn patches of snow clung to the countryside, and his boots squelched in the mud where the sun had prevailed. Just an hour ago, before the world went sideways, it had been nearing summer. Just an hour ago, he'd been fighting for his life against demons summoned by insane priests in what was left of Wallachia. Now… the countryside was peaceful. He could see traces of chimneysmoke from distant hamlets along the road, and birds chirped without fear of demons stalking the brush. It was… surreal.

Either he really had gone back in time, or this was some sort of strange afterlife. He was partial to the first option. Half because that way he wasn't dead, but half because it was way more insane, and therefore more likely according to the Trevor Method (the method being, of course, that whenever magic was involved, the most batshit possibility was the most likely to be true).

But when the road he was on merged with another, and he saw the dark figure now traveling at his side, Trevor changed his tune. He was absolutely in his own personal hell, because the other traveler was Dracula. 

Fucking. Dracula.

He looked less imposing in the light of day, wearing a simple black coat and a bag slung over his shoulders. The Vampire made no attempt to hide the sharpness of his ears and fangs, but without those features, he could have been mistaken for an unusually tall man, and no more. Trevor couldn't help but stare. So this is what Alucard had meant, when he said Dracula used to "travel like a man."

Maybe Trevor could still sneak away, but then what? He was still a Belmont, for fuck's sake, he couldn't let the damn Lord of Darkness go gallivanting about Wallachia unimpeded. He knew exactly how well that had gone _last time,_ and he'd be damned if he let it happen again. No, he needed to stop him, somehow, from whatever nefarious shit he was maybe, probably, _definitely_ going to do. And if that's the way he went out, well, at least he'd be in good company—

"Belmont. I can hear you trying to think. Stop before you hurt yourself."

Trevor didn't shriek. He didn't. He only possibly expressed his indignation in the form of a very manly cry. "Wh-what the _fuck_? Why do you even think I'm a Belmont, huh? You didn't even turn to look at me!"

Dracula, because holy shit, it was _definitely_ Dracula, merely gave him a droll stare. "It's the stench, Belmont. Your whole brood has it. Now, please, get to the part where you try and kill me so that I can be on my way. I have… somewhere to be."

Trevor didn't even know how to respond to that. No doubt his ancestors were spinning in their graves, but Trevor figured these were special circumstances. A momentary time out on the old family feud, because seriously, even if Dracula seemed interested in murdering him— surprisingly, it seemed he did not— Trevor knew he could barely take on the vampire with the help of a Damphir and a mage at his side. He wasn't about to throw his life away for nothing but principle. "You know, I would, but I have a very simple question before we get to the part where I try to stake you and instead probably die horribly. What fucking year is it?"

At that, Dracula looked genuinely shocked. The wideness of his eyes only accentuated the creepy red color, and the vampire's voice dropped from its almost teasing register to something much more serious. "1475. Belmont, why…"

"Ok. Fuck. Ok, so, this is not a threat it's a damn warning and you totally don't have the time to stick around and kill me so—"

"Get. To. The. Point."

"Right. Right. Uh, you're going to want to check on your wife. Now. Like as fast as you can get there, because the bishop is a real fanatic and he'll have her burned as a witch, don't ask me how I know this—"

In an instant, Dracula was gone, and fire streaked towards the skies of Târgoviște.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is Alucard doing, you ask? You'll see. >:)


End file.
